Jaswinder Bolina’s poem, “Make Believe,” has been selected for the Favorite Poem Project:

New Issues published the American paperback edition of Murnane’s “The Plains,” in 2002. So wonderful to see this author’s work receive the attention it deserves!

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New Issues Thanks Bill Olsen for 10 Years of Service as Editor in Chief

“I could not have been more fortunate to have served New Issues for 10 years. Manuscripts and their new forms of excellence, the dedication and hope and idealism behind them, the legitimate need to be heard and help create community with words, the passion and good citizenry of our friends and readers, help from others which is always personal and felt, young and unheard voices taking hold and bettering the art of serious writing—to have been a part of all this is inspiring, and it leaves me deeply grateful.”
—Bill Olsen

Under his editorial leadership, we have published 72 titles, and earned numerous accolades, including the American Book Award, the Michigan Notable Book Award, a PEN Award, and a National Book Award long list citation, to name just a few. Bill stepped into his role as Editor of New Issues upon the passing of our Founding Editor, Herb Scott; he has now served the Press for as many years as Herb. With generosity and dedication, Bill has guided the labor of love that is New Issues in the truest spirit of its founding—the pursuit of the best unpublished work. He will be deeply missed at the Press.

New Issues is thrilled to welcome Nancy Eimers as our new Editor in Chief. Nancy has served as New Issues’ Guest Editor for the First Book Series since 2013. She has selected works for publication that have gone on to earn the Maine Book Award, Vermont Book Award, and finalist citations for both the Utah Book Award and the Texas Book Award. We are fortunate to have Nancy, an excellent and experienced Editor, leading our Press, contributing to an ever-growing legacy of literary achievement.

“I am delighted to join New Issues Press as editor. As the NIP first book editor for some years, I have long and deeply admired the vision this press has lived by, its commitment to quality, originality, and open-mindedness. I wholeheartedly honor founding editor Herb Scott for bringing the press to so vibrant a life, and editor Bill Olsen, whose commitment, guidance and wisdom in seeking out unique voices in poetry have made a lasting mark on New Issues and on the poetry community on a national level. I feel grateful to have been given the opportunity to carry on their important work.”
—Nancy Eimers

Longlisted for the National Book Award 2017

Congratulations to Carol Zoref, longlisted for the National Book Award for her debut novel, Barren Island! Order your copy today at ShopWMU.

“Barren Island is a wonderful synthesis of character and history. From the moment Marta Eisenstein Lane begins to tell us about her remarkable family’s lives on the rank, forsaken sand bar of Barren Shoal, rendering animal carcasses into glue, the author immerses us in a world most readers would never otherwise have known existed. As squalid and hardscrabble as these lives may be, they are also suffused with strange beauty and love by Marta’s solicitude and honesty. Barren Island is big-hearted, generous, and fascinating.” —Paul Harding, Pulitzer Prize for Fiction Tinkers

The 2017 Editor’s Choice for publication is “Let the House of Body Fall” by Sara Grossman. Congratulations!

The winner of the 2017 New Issues Poetry Prize is “Each Tree Could Hold a Noose or a House” by Nina Puro. Congratulations!

Our spring books are here!

“‘Though I am staggered, I am not undone,’ Nadine Sabra Meyer writes in her lucid, precise and well-crafted second book, a testament of moving into another stage of life. I am heartened by this heartfelt book of grief and sanctuary.”
—Edward Hirsch

Our Lady of Not Asking Why by Courtney Kampa
“Every page of Our Lady of Not Asking Why is lit by an electric human voice. It is a collection of voices that interrogates ideas about love and takes us deep into the complicated textures of its failures as well as the achievements of its mysterious, intimate bonds. These poems explore how we understand ourselves in proximity to our myths, vocabularies, desires, and most importantly, to one another, and each audacious act of speaking possesses ‘its own set of vowels,’ its own ‘ratifying pulse.’ Courtney Kampa knows ‘[i]t’s easy to say true things/without feeling any truth in them,’ and she possesses the lyric gifts to say what is hard and make us feel the truth of it. This is beautiful, sensual work, rich with precision and poise.” —Mary Szybist

A Passion According to Green by Mark Irwin
“In one of the startling and bracing poems in his new collection, Mark Irwin writes, ‘I believed that language could save us from the temporal.’ It might be said that all lyric poems derive from this heartbreaking and Quixotic longing. Yet Irwin is a writer undaunted by the lyric’s insufficiency. He makes from our confusion and bewilderment a poetry of propulsive language, imaginative depth, and a wounded moral authority that recalls the work of Milosz, Herbert, and Szymborska. In other words, Mark Irwin fashions poems that matter.” —David Wojahn

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